A Spark

I didn’t set any goals for myself for January 2025. After the Spooky/Christmas seasons wrapped up last year, I crashed. Hard. Mostly I just wanted to stay hunkered down in my bed and dissociate with comfort re-watches and embrace bed-cave life. As I get older, I’m realizing I align more with the old Roman calendar when the new year started in March. I find I come to life more when there are signs of life starting to emerge out in nature. Living in Maine, when the winter season daylight hours are short, the temps are cold, the SAD is in full swing, and the holiday decorations are being put away, I just don’t feel like I have a ton of energy to start fresh come January 1st. BUT, I do think it’s a natural moment to sort of take stock and do some reflection.

As I did said reflection, I had to acknowledge that I have been feeling out of sorts and in a creative rut for…a while. And with parts of the world figuratively—and literally—on fire, and things feeling really heavy, scary, and absolutely infuriating, I was incredibly surprised to feel a spark of something creative hit me two weeks into my January hibernation.

This time of reflection also had me thinking about how volatile social and content sharing apps have become, and can literally disappear overnight. I always find myself missing the old Instagram when I could open the app and see beautiful photos from friends and artists I followed. Now that it’s all about pushing video and advertising, and how Meta just sucks in general, it’s such a different experience. While I don’t want to lose the connections that I’ve built on these platforms for so many years, I find myself wanting to distance myself from that chaos.

A start

One night laying in bed, I couldn’t bear to open any social or news apps and see the inevitable onslaught of that day’s depressing headlines. Instead, I started scrolling through my own library of almost 40,000 (!) photos on my iPhone going back to 2008. And then the next day went through digital photo archives on an old hard drive. And through the weekend, went through old portfolios from a photo class I took in college. And then physical albums and envelopes of developed rolls from high school and earlier.

It was a lot of fun taking this trip down memory lane, and there were so many images that made me feel happy to look at them again. I decided it was time to make an online archive of the images I love the most. The more I noodled on this idea, the more stoked I was feeling to make it happen. The little spark inside was starting to grow into that feeling of my inner flame being ignited. I know when this happens, I need to lean into it, even if it means letting the laundry pile get even higher.

When too much time goes by without any personal art or creative projects, I can feel a little lost and grumpy. I know that art and creativity are essential parts of who I am, but there are so many other things that I need to focus my energy on as a mom, wife, business partner, homeowner, volunteer, and more recently, a daughter helping my mom with an unexpected cross-country move and transition back to New England from Arizona.

In the past, I’ve started projects to help me get back into a creative practice when I was in a rut like this. In 2014 I started a tumblr blog called Art All Year where I challenged myself to do just one art/creative project each month for the whole year. Having that structure and sharing it online honestly did really help me find a path back to my creative self. Over the next few years, I did a couple of 100 Day Projects which were also super fun and a great way to fit bite-sized bits of art making into my life.

The plan: keep it simple

For this photo journal, to get things in motion, I want to keep things as simple as possible and keep the focus on curating and sharing the collections. Squarespace is fine for now. I’m trying to squash my perfectionism, my inner critic, and not overthink the site design. I can always change things later if this platform becomes too limiting, if I decide to add more of my art, etc.

While this project is mostly for me, I thought it would be fun to invite anyone who’s interested in taking a break from doom scrolling, or just enjoys having something lovely in their inbox, come along for the journey and opt in to my mailing list. (While I’ll still likely share when a new collection is up on Facebook and/or Instagram, I’m not sure if/how much longer I’ll be as active on those platforms.)

My current plan is to share one-ish collection per month. I’ve already got a couple loaded up since I got excited to get this started. Collections might be organized by a specific theme, color scheme, ✨vibe✨, or just a random grouping that I felt worked well together.

OK, so I guess I kinda did make a goal after all?

Now that this is REAL, I’m already feeling inspired to level up my photo game. I’m thinking about where I want to go next for a photo adventure. I’d like to get back to the basics of technique and technical skills. Maybe adding a lens or two to start experimenting with, and/or upgrading my camera body over the next year or two.

While we still have a couple of cold months to slog through here in Maine, I can already feel an overall shift in my energy and mental health to have something positive and joyful to focus on. It feels more important than ever to have that. Photography as a hobby has been a part of my life since my very first Kodak Extralite 10, and I’m excited to see where this journey will lead in 2025 and beyond. LFG!